WhatsApp bans over 1.9 million Indian account in May 2022

Meta-owned instant messaging platform WhatsApp in its monthly User Safety report has revealed that it has banned over 1.9 million Indian accounts in the month of May 2022. The report is mandatory to be made public in accordance with the IT Rules 2021. 

Between May 1, 2022 and May 31, 2022, the company received a total of 149 account support reports, 34 product safety reports and 13 safety reports. No action was taken over these. It also received 303 ban appeals and out of these only 23 appeals (7.6%) were acted upon. 

Overall, there were 528 grievance reports during May 2022 and 24 accounts were acted upon. Taking action means that an account has been banned or a previously banned account has been restored. 

WhatsApp uses three level abuse detection. First at the time of registration, then during messaging and finally by negative feedback which are the amount of user reports and blocks. During May, a total of 1,910,000 accounts were banned on the platform. 

“Over the years, we have consistently invested in Artificial Intelligence and other state-of-the-art technology, data scientists and experts, and in processes, in order to keep our users safe on our platform. In accordance with the IT Rules 2021, we’ve published our report for the month of May 2022,” said a WhatsApp spokesperson.